attendant liberation movement, strength- ened considerably. By the end of summer 1952, Elmaghribi had given his first of many private concerts for the royal family. He provided his brother Simon with sumptuous play-by-play. “Last Sunday, Prince Moulay Hassan, son of the Sultan, sent for me and I sang until the break of dawn,” he wrote on Aug. 22, 1952. This was no audition. Crown Prince Hassan was more than familiar with Elmaghribi and his music. “My hits were re- quested by His Highness himself,” he noted. After having brought him to his Casablanca villa, the crown prince promised the artist an invitation to the most iconic venue of all. On Nov. 17, 1952, just before midnight, Elmaghribi took the microphone at Dar al-Makhzan, the royal palace and offcial residency of the sultan in Rabat. For the oc- casion of Throne Day ( ʿ id al-arsh ), a holiday invented by nationalists in 1933, the sultan himself had requested the presence of the Jewish artist. In the early hours of Nov. 18, 1952, Elmaghribi sang two patriotic com- positions of his own creation as well as other songs “before some 2,000 Muslims and before Moulay el Hassan, who presided over the soirée where the best musical and theat- rical troops of Morocco had passed through.” If his relationship to the monarchy could once be considered private, his association with the royal family was now public. Again he communicated his triumph to his brother in Marseilles. “My success has exceeded the limits of my wildest dreams,” Elmaghribi proclaimed. “The ovation given to me by the public was nothing like the simple applause received by other artists,” he boasted. “Then came the congratulations of all the Muslim personalities, which touched me,” he added. Elmaghribi’s “sensational revolution in Ori- ental music” was now firmly aligned with the royal family. n
Casablanca 1950s.
But if Moroccan audiences gravitated toward “Lukan al-milayin,” they would have also relished its folly. Traveling by boat and plane in order to reach “the East and Lebanon, India and Yemen” (fil -sharq wa-lubnan, fil-hind wa-l-yaman ), as Elmagh- ribi crooned, would have been recognized as pure fantasy when considering that the majority of Moroccans needed permission to travel abroad. And yet, the realm of possi- bility that was part and parcel of the appeal of a song like “Lukan al-milayin” would also have suddenly seemed within grasp as the national struggle gained ground. Elmaghribi’s music was providing Moroccans with a taste of their possible future. By 1951, Elmaghribi was increasingly in demand within an ever-widening circle of Moroccan fans, among them the political es- tablishment, the well-heeled, and the working class. While his earliest concerts had already attracted a multiconfessional Moroccan audi- ence, he actively cultivated Jewish-Muslim diversity in the years to come. Initially, he did so in a number of ways, including through the promotion of his shows with Arabic-language concert posters and by featuring highly re- garded Muslim artists on the bill like Lahbib Kadmiri and Bouchaïb El Bidaoui. Thanks to a combination of factors—his look, his voice, his choice of song, his charisma, and the shows that he assembled—Elmaghribi could report the following to Simon: My success in Morocco is certainly immense and I am recognized and surrounded very quickly no matter which city I’m in, in Casa, [cities] small and big, everyone points out Samy with their finger, with a smile [ . . . ] the great success of the day remains the Song of
the Millions (my creation) in Arabic of which you have the record and which is hummed by Arabs and Jews, young and old, men and women, in all the cities of Morocco. He could hardly move in Morocco without drawing attention or being swarmed by fans. The veneration of Elmaghribi by Moroccans even caused some Jews who had left the country to second-guess their decision, at least momentarily. “Moroccan Jews arriving in France are speaking about your success with pride and admiration,” Simon informed his brother on Aug. 14, 1951. “I would have paid dearly to find myself in Morocco these days,” he continued, “to be intoxicated by your rise to success; I miss this Morocco.” In 1952, Elmaghribi started explicitly flying the colors of Moroccan nationalism—or at least wearing them. “I have ordered from a fine tailor six splendid outfits for the six best performers in Morocco, who will accompany me on my tour,” he wrote to his brother on Feb. 22, 1952. “These wool outfits are in the Moroccan colors: red vests with satin-lined lapels and green pants,” he added with pride. In the midst of composing, recording, performing, and preparing for yet another concert tour in April and May 1952, El- maghribi had been contacted by the sultan. “These [outfits] were designed,” he noted, “for our presentation to His Majesty the Sultan and then the Glaoui [Thami El Glaoui, the pasha of Marrakesh], which is going to give me a good helping hand in my climb to success.” The red-and-green outfits seem to have done just the trick. Over the next year, the relationship be- tween Elmaghribi and the sultan, the central symbol of Moroccan anticolonialism and its
Christopher Silver’s book, Recording History , was published by Stanford University Press in 2022.
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